But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.

The most reckless and treacherous of all theorists is he who professes to let facts and figures speak for themselves.

Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.

It is common to distinguish necessaries, comforts, and luxuries; the first class including all things required to meet wants which must be satisfied, while the latter consist of things that meet wants of a less urgent character.

I admit that these terms and the diagrams connected with them repel some readers, and fill others with the vain imagination that they have mastered difficult economics problems, when really they have done little more than learn the language in which parts of those problems can be expressed, and the machinery by which they can be handled. When the actual conditions of particular problems have not been studied, such knowledge is little better than a derrick for sinking oil-wells erected where there are no oil-bearing strata.